Breaker Mourant
“Breaker Morant”: Victorian Attitudes and British Imperialism
The film “Breaker Morant” is a cinematic attack of the trial of three Australian colonials serving in the British Army during the second Boer War, which opposed the British against two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The war was waged from 1899 to 1902 and resulted in a British victory and the annexation of the two republics into what would eventually become the British territory of South Africa. While the film’s focus is on a miscarriage of justice against the Australians, who became involved in a new type of guerilla war, the movie’s underlying theme is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Victorian England’s attitudes towards its colonial subjects as well as to indict British imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Charles Dickens famously pointed out in his indirect disapproval of the Victorian Age: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness.”(Dickens, page 585) Victorian Britain, the predominant world power and arbiter of social and political correctness, portrayed itself as the light to the nations. The British viewed their government as enlightened and its treatment of its colonies as compassionate. It preached equality and mutual respect. In the minds of the millions of its Commonwealth and dominion populations, however, the British had developed a sense of inherent superiority and dominance that would eventually lead to the independence movements in the nations of the Commonwealth and the eventual dismantling of the British Empire. “Breaker Morant”, a movie directed by an Australian, portrays a Commonwealth nation’s view of this Victorian hypocrisy in the first years of the twentieth century. The movie begins by telling the tale of three Australian volunteers who volunteered for service in a newly formed British
The film “Breaker Morant” is a cinematic attack of the trial of three Australian colonials serving in the British Army during the second Boer War, which opposed the British against two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The war was waged from 1899 to 1902 and resulted in a British victory and the annexation of the two republics into what would eventually become the British territory of South Africa. While the film’s focus is on a miscarriage of justice against the Australians, who became involved in a new type of guerilla war, the movie’s underlying theme is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Victorian England’s attitudes towards its colonial subjects as well as to indict British imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Charles Dickens famously pointed out in his indirect disapproval of the Victorian Age: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness.”(Dickens, page 585) Victorian Britain, the predominant world power and arbiter of social and political correctness, portrayed itself as the light to the nations. The British viewed their government as enlightened and its treatment of its colonies as compassionate. It preached equality and mutual respect. In the minds of the millions of its Commonwealth and dominion populations, however, the British had developed a sense of inherent superiority and dominance that would eventually lead to the independence movements in the nations of the Commonwealth and the eventual dismantling of the British Empire. “Breaker Morant”, a movie directed by an Australian, portrays a Commonwealth nation’s view of this Victorian hypocrisy in the first years of the twentieth century. The movie begins by telling the tale of three Australian volunteers who volunteered for service in a newly formed British
Bibliography: 1- Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century. New York: W. Morrow, 1997. Print. 2- Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist ; Great Expectations ; A Tale of Two Cities. Minneapolis, MN: Amaranth, 1985. Print. 3- Daniel, Clifton. 20th Century Day by Day. New York, NY: Dorling Kindersley Pub., 2000. Print. 4- Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).